Friday, August 3, 2012

THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #88: A review of "The Night They Missed the Horror Show" by Joe R. Lansdale

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At last, we meet the very polar opposite of polite horror: VULGAR HORROR. After reading this story, it’s easy to see why most people mistook Lansdale for a splatterpunk writer. It is also the first real reoccurrence of the dreaded n-word. Much like in Howard’s story from earlier in this anthology, “nigger” is pretty rampant throughout this story, and it’s used in a much uglier fashion.



This is the story of Leonard and Farto. The former is an incredibly racist jerkoff, and the latter is the fart-lighting champion of Mud Creek, TX. Their original plan for the evening is to go to the drive-in to see NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but Leonard doesn’t want to do this because they don’t have dates, and he heard that the star of the movie is actually a black fellow. Instead, they get a bit drunk and chain a dead dog they find in the road to the back of their car for a little fun.


Yeah. Fun.


While they’re having a good ol’ time watching the dog come apart as they drive, they see a bunch of kids from a rival high school, roughing up Scott, a black guy that goes to Leonard and Farto’s school. It looks like the poor bastard broke down by the side of the road, and these other guys were giving him shit. At first, our heroes decide to keep driving. Then, they remember that Scott is their star quarterback, and they’ll probably start losing games without him. To quote Leonard, “He may be a nigger, but he’s our nigger . . . .” After a daring rescue, they find that the rival high school kids are giving them chase. After taking advice from Scott (which really, really gets to Leonard), they evade their pursuers and have a celebratory drink. (Which makes Leonard feel better, since Scott is drinking from a cup he’d once taken a piss in.)


Unfortunately for the boys, it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire. It is at this point that they run into people who are meaner, nastier, and more racist than they are. SPOILER ALERT: When they turn down an alley to get away from the other kids, they accidentally find themselves in the middle of a screening for a snuff film. A bunch of good ol’ boys are watching a flick in which a girl is forced to give head before getting her own head blown off. Two fat guys, twins, see our boys and force them to get out of the car. Both fat guys, Vince and Pork, are disgusted to see a couple of white boys hanging out with a black guy. Oh, how “nigger” doth flow . . . . Unceremoniously, they blow Scott’s brains out and shove his body in the back of Leonard’s car. Now it’s time to go for a ride so they can dump Scott’s corpse.


Things go from worse to worst when they get to the Broken Bridge, where they intend to sink Scott’s body to the bottom of the river. Vince and Pork turn out to at least have some kind of heart when they finally notice the dog attached to the back of Leonard’s car. They assume that what Leonard and Farto did was, they chained the dog to the back of their car, alive, and laughed when it couldn’t keep up. Despite Leonard’s best efforts to deny this, they decide he’s lower than whale shit.


They put Scott in the trunk, along with Farto. Then, they take the chain from around the dog’s neck and put it around Leonard’s. Then, they put the car in neutral and roll it off the bridge into the river below. Disgusted, Vince and Pork drive off, thinking they did those white boys a favor. “Them running around with niggers and what they did to that dog and all. They weren’t worth a thing.” Vinnie thinks they should have filmed the whole thing with the car, but Pork thinks not. “Nah, there wasn’t any women.” Vinnie agrees, and they drive back to the screening of that snuff film from earlier. END OF SPOILERS.


Holy shit. You don’t get more vulgar than that. This is a dark, nasty story, and it does more than earn its spot in this volume; it rapes its way into 1988. It is easily one of the top five best horror stories of all time. If you’ve never read this story, and you claim to be a horror fan, you’re a liar and a fool. If you’ve never read Lansdale, you are missing one of the greatest, if not the greatest, living writers we have.


[This story first appeared in SILVER SCREAM (one of the finest horror anthologies EVER) and can be read here.]

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